Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

My comrade, who was known to the workers, simply introduced me: ‘Borodín, a friend.’ ‘Tell us, Borodín,’ he said, ‘what you have seen abroad.’ And I spoke of the labour movement in Western Europe, its struggles, its difficulties, and its…

Sophisms--no end of sophisms--about the slowness of evolution, the inertia of the lower classes, the uselessness of sacrifice, were uttered to justify the unspoken words, all intermingled with assurances of each one’s willingness to make…

Yet no one had the courage to say, frankly and openly, that he was ready to do only that which would not endanger his own dovecote.

But underneath all the thrilling speeches, one note resounded: How could each of the speakers preserve his own personal well-being?

My sympathies went especially toward the weavers and the workers in the cotton factories.

It was only after they had been arrested and kept three or four years in prison for having dared to think as socialists, and had sounded the full depth of Russian absolutism, that several of them developed into ardent propagandists…

In a free country they would have been the habitual speakers at public meetings; but, like the privileged workers of the watch trade in Geneva, they treated the mass of the factory hands with a sort of contempt, and were in no haste to…

If anyone of us had ventured to attempt oratorical effects by a speech, friendly jokes would have shown him at once that speech-making was out of place.

An absolute sincerity, a general desire to settle the difficulties for the best, and a frankly expressed contempt for all that in the least degree approached theatrical affectation were quite sufficient.

The books and pamphlets which were printed abroad were smuggled into Russia by thousands, stored at certain spots, and sent out to the local circles, which distributed them amongst the peasants and the workers.

The literature which could be published in Russia under a rigorous censorship--the faintest hint of socialism being prohibited--was soon found insufficient, and we started a printing office of our own abroad.

When one has talent, everything contributes to its development.

I began to tell the peasant that he must not pay taxes, that the functionaries plunder the people, and I tried to convince him by quotations from the Bible that they must revolt.

He had read and thought a great deal, and upon the revolutionary character of the struggle which we had undertaken it appeared we had similar views.

But when I came to know more of him, I felt real love for his honest, frank nature, for his youthful energy and good sense, for his superior intelligence, simplicity, and truthfulness, and for his courage and tenacity.

The letter she wrote to her mother a few hours before she went to the scaffold is one of the best expressions of a loving soul that a woman’s heart ever dictated.

Two generations, perhaps, will succumb in the task, and yet it must be done.’ None of the women of our circle would have given way before the certainty of death on the scaffold.

She had no need to embellish the workers and the peasants with imaginary virtues in order to love them and to work for them.

Peróvskaya was a ‘popularist’ to the very bottom of her heart, and at the same time a revolutionist, a fighter of the truest steel.

I was in a family of men and women so closely united by their common object, and so broadly and delicately humane in their mutual relations, that I cannot now recall a single moment of even temporary friction marring the life of our circle.

During those two years it was life under high pressure--that exuberance of life when one feels at every moment the full throbbing of all the fibres of the inner self, and when life is really worth living.

I should have gone in a direction which was not the one dictated by my own nature, and I should not have found in it the personal happiness which I have found in other paths.

There certainly will come a time when all these people, feeling that they are compromised, will in their own interest take a decisive step.

I will bring them together and unite them, if possible, into a sort of organization; and then, some day, there is sure to be an opportunity to direct all these forces toward compelling Alexander II. to give Russia a constitution.

As the question of agitation for a constitution was continually being raised in our discussions, I once proposed to our circle to take it up seriously and to choose an appropriate plan of action.